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Syncrude's wood bison ranch turns 25

A single bison peers through the fences at Syncrude's Beaver Creek Wood Bison Ranch, located north of Fort McMurray, Alta., on Friday June 19, 2015. The herd grazes a reclaimed mine once operated by Syncrude. Vincent McDermott/Fort McMurray Today/Postmedia Network

At a lookout nearly 40 kilometres north of Fort McMurray is a world most of the prairies hasn’t seen in more than a century.

For the last 25 years, 300 wood bison have grazed 4.5 square kilometres of grassland that was once an open-pit mine. On the other side of the lookout is a tailings pond being reclaimed, with Syncrude’s base plant across the shore.

As the Beaver Creek Wood Bison Ranch celebrates its anniversary, it’s an example of the type of landscape Syncrude and the Fort McKay First Nation - the two groups running the ranch - hope will become routine across the oilsands.

“It clearly demonstrates to me we have the ability to put the land to productive use when it’s reclaimed,” said Chief Jim Boucher during a Thursday afternoon interview.

A bison and calf at the Beaver Creek Wood Bison Ranch's herd on June 25, 2009. The ranch was built on land reclaimed from Syncrude's past mining operations north of Fort McMurray. Gavin Young/Calgary Herald/Postmedia Network

Before the herd began roaming a field north of Fort McMurray on Feb. 16, 1993, Syncrude mused about testing the land’s sustainability by raising cattle. But talks with members of the Fort McKay First Nation led Syncrude to consider reintroducing wood bison to the area.

The project’s success would mean an animal with significant cultural importance to the local Métis and First Nation communities could still survive in the Fort McMurray area.

It would also prove Syncrude’s reclamation efforts could turn mining sites into land capable of supporting the same plants and animals that existed long before anyone knew what bitumen was.

No one was scared the project would fail, said Greg Fuhr, Syncrude’s vice president of mining.

“They don’t create a lot of challenges for us,” he said. “They’re a very hardy animal and able to handle all the weather extremes we’ve seen.”

A sign explaining how the buffalo - as well as bison - were used by Indigenous cultures at the Fort Chipewyan Bicentennial Museum on December 12, 2014. Vincent McDermott/Fort McMurray Today/Postmedia Network

The creatures are a close cousin to the plains bison that famously roamed the prairies in herds numbering in the tens of thousands. However, they had been placed on the government’s Species at Risk list when the ranch was created.

Overhunting, industrial expansion and urban sprawl had hurt the animal’s population across the west. Preservation efforts that began in 1893 was protecting a small herd in Wood Buffalo National Park.

However, former Syncrude president said the animals had not lived in the Fort McMurray area in nearly 200 years. Their habitat, said Carter, had once stretched as far south as Lac La Biche.

On the day a herd of 30 bison from Elk Island National Park near Edmonton arrived at the ranch, the band manager for Fort McKay First Nation told reporters “we’re playing a role in saving an endangered species.”

The project has become a public relations victory for Syncrude, which is not shy about using them as an example of what reclamation can do in the oilsands.

He added that during the May 2016 wildfire, their popularity meant one of the most common questions the company got from the public was whether the animals were still alive. None of them died or were injured in the fire, he added.

While Boucher says he is curious about what industries reclaimed land could spring, he is not happy with the pace of reclamation itself.

The amount of land that has been restored is “marginal,” he said, and he is concerned about the progress oilsands companies have shown with rebuilding wetlands.

“We need to do a lot more work to demonstrate to the world we have the ability to reclaim the land to suitable purposes,” he said. “We’re capable of doing a lot more.”

Mike Hudema of Greenpeace Canada wonders what the health of animals living so close to the base plant would be like if they were left alone by humans.

“I’m sure the bison would rather be surrounded by an intact ecosystem instead of a fenced space next to mining operations,” he said.

Syncrude has insisted the animals are in perfect health, while Fuhr says their health has helped researchers.

Genetic samples have been preserved by scientists at the Universities of Calgary and Saskatchewan, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Parks Canada, the Government of the Northwest Territories and the Calgary Zoo.

About 100 calves are born annually, while the animals are sometimes sold as breeding stock and win awards at livestock shows. Occasionally, harvests with the First Nation are held to control the population.

“The reality is the bison are healthier than the people,” said Boucher. “The burgers are good, too.”